


One Last Drink

by LastScorpion



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 07:32:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4598211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastScorpion/pseuds/LastScorpion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What did Stonetree actually know or suspect about what Nick was?  How did he know?  Why did he act the way he did?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Last Drink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skieswideopen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skieswideopen/gifts).



Vampires. They're never as subtle as they think they are.

But hey. It's Toronto. Nobody's as subtle as they think they are.

Y'know who's subtle? My cousin, Molly. Most shamans, actually. Cats (not kittens). Certain kinds of seals. Two of my wife's sisters.

Definitely not vampires. (Alright, they're more subtle than werewolves. But that's not saying much.)

Nick Knight first came to me one night a few years ago. It was in the early spring. I realized it because I lost half-an-hour that evening. You gotta be observant if you're a cop; I pay attention to the time, especially when I'm staying late to cover for somebody else on a different shift. So I checked the video surveillance at the front desk, and sifted through it for any thing, person, or creature with the ability to cloud men's minds. Spotted the vampire first thing. 

Nothing was out of place around the Station that evening; nobody turned up missing or looked more-than-usually anemic. No need to panic. I just fixed the fella's face in my mind, and got Molly to make me up a protective amulet the next morning.

When he showed up again, about a month later, I was ready for him.

I mean that literally as well as, well, spiritually. I had a stake and holy water in my top desk drawer, and a good hunting knife. I'd stashed a big tarp in the corner, behind the file cabinet, and I had a coupla three cans of gas in the trunk of my car. I'd never actually killed a vampire myself, but I'd always paid attention to the stories my uncles told when I was a kid.

It was a good amulet. I could tell the vampire thought I was in his thrall for that whole conversation, but I was just playing along. I wanted to know what he was after. 

Turned out he wanted to join the Force. To repay society for his sins. Huh.

The uncles taught all us kids to play poker when we were little. They useta say, "Bluffing is a Life Skill." I gave the vampire true but incomplete information. Even if his sources for fake ID and so on could move like lightning, he was still gonna face a boatload of delays.

I had to give myself the time to do some more research.

It was a new idea to me. Vampire cop.

************

Not all vampires are bad. Well, they're not all really, truly, bone-deep bad. They're all hellishly dangerous, but they're not all bad.

My uncles never had to explicitly teach that as a lesson, not to me. I was seven when we lost my grandfather; I remember. It was the first time I stayed up all night, and besides, you could still see the scar on my arm until I was about fourteen.

(Wendigo, now, wendigo are completely different. You get the slightest hint that you may be dealing with a wendigo, you gear up to kill it as quick as you possibly can, and you pray like fury that you'll be quick enough. Vampires you just gotta be prepared, be cautious, like with werewolves and water-weirds. Don't hesitate, but don't charge in without a second thought, either. You'll still haveta kill it nine times outta ten, but an honest man will keep in mind the chance that this might be the tenth one.)

**************

I did my research, talked with family, looked stuff up. Nick Knight, under one name or another, had definitely been around as long ago as the American Civil War. He'd been an Army Doctor then, which was promising. I didn't find any evidence of anything terrible he'd done recently.

So Nick hired on as a cop. He came in at detective, and I didn't object. So he hadn't, strictly speaking, earned it. So what? Vampire's got a hell of a lot of natural ability for finding things out and hunting people down. Besides, I was keeping a sharp eye on him.

I made sure to give him a hard time about his hours, his appearance, and whatever else seemed reasonable, first year or so he worked the job. Had to poke him to see if he'd snap -- otherwise I'd never know until it was too late. I wanted to know how itchy on the trigger he was with that mind control thing, too, while Molly's amulet was still fresh and strong.

He was a pretty good detective.

But I started to worry about him.

Depending on age and disposition, a vampire can be kinda delicate -- fragile, even, you might say.

Sure they got strength and speed, mind control, ability to fly. They can hunt like nobody's business. But daylight kills 'em dead. A vampire can't really afford to be careless, or too regretful, or melancholy, not for long anyway. Even in the winter in the farthest northern latitudes, the sun will always rise eventually.

And down here in Toronto, sunrise is never more than about fifteen hours away.

**************

That's how we lost my grandfather.

**************

So who do you assign as the partner of a vampire detective? It's gotta be somebody who'll be safe, who doesn't thrall easy, but who doesn't reach for the stake and holy water first thing. We didn't have any of the old Hunting families' sons (or daughters, these days) in Metro Homicide that year, or the choice woulda been easy.

Don Schanke was maybe not ideal. If he hadn't been such a garlic-eater I wouldda had to go with somebody else. He was an awful good cop, down-to-earth. Had to ride him a little to keep him from getting too cocky, but that's easily done. 

Him and Knight were a hell of a team.

(I wish he'd picked up on that legend I told him. Lotta families don't have Hunters in 'em anymore, but the stories got passed down to surviving non-Hunter branches of the family -- if he'd been a guy like that, maybe just a generation or two removed from family members who knew the score, like, it could have been different. Probably not, though. Who knows?)

**************

Uncle Jim was the eldest of Mom's eight big brothers. 

So, except for Granddad and Gran, he knew the most about everything that happened, since that dark winter of 1918-1919, when my grandfather died and my mom was born, and 50,000 Canadians lost their lives to the Spanish Flu.

He never knew who bit Granddad. He used to say that his father went out on a Hunt, with his old partner Jim, who my uncle was named after. Jim had been a Mountie when he was young, but his stories about vampires and werewolves were too farfetched for even the far North of the country, and he'd left them (or they'd fired him) about 1900. Jim didn't make it back from that Hunt, and Granddad came back about a month later than he'd been expected, pale and bloodstained. My uncle, then fifteen, had just about resigned himself to having to be the man of the house. He said the combination of relief and terror, when his father returned to the family, but returned to them Undead, was indescribable, and he was glad he never felt anything worse.

He said the look on Gran's face was a terrible one.

The first night Granddad went Hunting after he came home, Gran told all the kids their chances were nine in ten that they'd have to kill him some time. 

*****************

So I watched over Knight, and I watched over Toronto.

I watched over Don, and Natalie. I could tell that sometimes the darkness seemed to be gettin' the better of Nick, but the two of them, without magic, without weapons -- they always seemed to pull him back.

It was all goin' pretty well.

And life went on, and the City of Toronto, and Metro Homicide. 

By the time Knight & Schanke were transferred from the 27th to the 96th, I wasn't even particularly concerned about my vampire detective. I thought the two of them would do okay.

I guess I got complacent.

****************

That's a thing that Gran never was, nor any of my uncles, or my parents either, for that matter. (Mom married into a military family. She never went Hunting with her brothers, at least not after she got married, but Dad understood vigilance and readiness, too, and we were always prepared for trouble at home, just like our cousins were.)

Everybody in our family, over the age of seven, kept a stake on them always. I was the last of the cousins to get one, just about a month before the end. The littler ones were doused with holy water and garlic every day.

Uncle Jim says that my grandfather kept to a few simple rules, and the first among them was to never lay a tooth on a human being. Mostly he fed on the blood of animals, and he'd fight werewolves and grizzlies hand-to-hand and fang-to-fang, but sometimes he seemed to need a little human blood to keep himself strong and sane. When he did, Gran used a sharp silver knife her own grandmother had left her, and Granddad always used an old horn cup they had.

Uncle Jim used to say that Gran's family were famous for their knowledge of all the old lore, and, of course, Granddad had been Hunting all manner of creatures since about 1885, with two of his own elder brothers who didn't live to see any of the next generation. He never knew if there were written sources they'd ever seen, or if it was all word-of-mouth and trial-and-error, handed down father-to-son and mother-to-daughter. 

However the knowledge came down to the family, everybody was ready to put Grandad down if it became necessary. I remember those days, maybe too well, when Gran was dying, and all the uncles and cousins were bone-deep afraid that Grandad would become a real monster once she passed. We were worried about the wrong thing. Grandad only lived three more days once he was widowed.

*******************

It was quite a loss to the Department when that plane went down.

Marie had just passed away when it happened. We'd been married almost twenty-five years. I'm afraid I was in no fit state to remember to keep watch over the vampire I'd hired.

Even if I had been, I'm not sure that I could have saved anything.

Sometimes there's just nothing to be done. Nobody lives forever. Nobody.

*****************

One Last Drink  
by Enter the Haggis  
enterthehaggis.com  
or a lot of their songs are up on youtube -- link!  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK1lXSxZbHw

I've had a life that's full;  
Everyone's been good to me.  
So fire up that fiddle, boy,  
And give me one last drink.  
When the sun comes up,  
I will leave without a fight.  
The world is mine tonight.

Old John on his deathbed cried,  
I think I will wait 'til tomorrow to die.  
The sun is shining; birds still sing.  
This, sir, is no day to go  
up and out the door.

I've had a life that's full;  
Everyone's been good to me.  
So fire up that fiddle, boy,  
And give me one last drink.  
When the sun comes up,  
I will leave without a fight.  
The world is mine tonight.

Took young Molly by the hand,  
Spun her around and back again,  
Clicked his heels, bowed his head,  
Never a tear in his eye.  
They carried on 'til five.

I've had a life that's full;  
Everyone's been good to me.  
So fire up that fiddle, boy,  
And give me one last drink.  
When the sun comes up,  
I will leave without a fight.  
The world is mine tonight.

So raise a glass to the dear departed  
Raise a glass to the dear departed  
Raise a glass to the dear departed ones.

Room was full of all his friends,  
Never a funeral, this was the end,  
They drank to all who lent their hands.  
Everyone drank to John.  
He raised his glass and said:

I've had a life that's full;  
Everyone's been good to me.  
So fire up that fiddle, boy,  
And give me one last drink.  
When the sun comes up,  
I will leave without a fight.  
The world is mine tonight.  
Oh, I've had a life that's full;  
Everyone's been good to me.  
So fire up that fiddle, boy,  
And give me one last drink.  
When the sun comes up,  
I will leave without a trace.  
The world was mine today.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize that this didn't exactly fulfill the challenge. Once I had the image of Stonetree's grandfather walking out into the sunrise as the end of that old Haggis song, there was nothing else I could do except write this fic. 
> 
> I'll owe you one. *shrug*
> 
> And thanks to Conflagrationette for the beta-reading!


End file.
